Life in Portland Blog

An exciting and proactive way to brighten – literally! – up your neighborhood, the Little Free Library is essentially an interactive pop-up pod for literature exchange in your community. I’ve already stumbled across two of these libraries (one in my wanders through Portland’s Beaumont neighborhood, and saw another just recently in Charleston, South Carolina) and fell in love with the simple concept of a carefully curated selection books on offer, for free no less, with the lightbulb adage of “take one, give one.” Not only does this grass roots program foster community interaction and social engagement, it also promotes the idea of providing books of all genres and tastes to both adults and children in communities that may be lacking in resources. Your neighborhood’s Little Free Library can be purchased direct from the source, or you can roll up your sleeves and build your own, utilizing building tips and ideas on littlefreelibrary.org, which is an excellent resource for getting started, with videos, blogs, FAQs, and even a map illustrating the happy spread of the Little Free Library’s global movement.